Perfect Dark Zero

Perfect Dark Zero (PDZ) has been a long time coming. The 'prequel' to the original Perfect Dark comes at a time when first person shooters are at their zenith of popularity, having evolved very different gameplay dynamics since Perfect Dark was originally introduced on the Nintendo 64. The release of PDZ also exhibits many similarities to the release of the seminal Halo for the original Xbox, generating incredibly high expectations for the game. It is for this reason that direct comparisons between Halo and PDZ are inevitable. But what's clear is that comparisons between PDZ and Halo, or any other great first person shooter of recent years, may be somewhat misplaced; PDZ is a throwback of sorts to the old gameplay dynamics that made the original, as well as Goldeneye 007, so fantastic in their day. PDZ ends up being a generally impressive and entertaining game, but falls short of the high expectations and more refined standards of today's first person shooters.

Gameplay

Joanna Dark returns in this prequel as the heroin once again. This time around we get a peak at her origins as she fights alongside her bounty hunter father. Before long, Joanna stumbles upon a conspiracy involving the Datadyne Corporation and their plans to blah blah blah blah blah… Problem is, the story in this game is so barely constructed that it hardly matters. Having played through it several times, I'm still at a loss as the exact plot details or why it is exactly that I'm playing in a certain level or trying to accomplish certain objectives. The story is there, but it's just poorly conceptualized and implemented. One wonders why Rare chose to make the next Perfect Dark game a prequel to begin with as choosing a prequel inherently suggests that there was something significant or compelling that the developers had in mind for the story, but clearly this is not the case. Mind you, a story won't necessarily make or break a game, but it's disappointing that such a poor job was done since the background and setting has such promise.

PDZ plays like it did years ago in the original. Missions are objective based and require more than the usual 'shoot this many enemies, move to this new area, shoot some more enemies, repeat.' There will typically be more objectives to complete on the harder difficulty settings, giving some incentive to challenge yourself once you've been through the game once already. You'll be occasionally required to escort civilians or scientists, retrieve certain items, or provide cover for friendly characters, for instance. While the game is not without its intense moments, it forgoes non-stop action with a slower pace punctuated by moments of intensity. This is perhaps a good thing considering that the game controls are not quite as tight as you'd hope. Even with the aiming sensitivity turned on full, Joanna tends to float through her environments rather than whipping around with lightening precision. Regardless, this kind of approach to responsiveness seems fitting given the objective-based gameplay, especially since quite a few objectives require stealthy tactics. PDZ occasionally requires you to stay unnoticed, taking out enemies silently, one at a time, while you creep about a level. Otherwise, if Joanna is noticed, an enemy will trigger an alarm which sends an endless flood of enemies her way guaranteeing death. This is a fine gameplay dynamic in concept that has worked wonderfully in the original game and Goldeneye 007. However, it's difficult to gauge level by level whether you're required to be stealthy, and what exactly constitutes stealthy gameplay to begin with. Since this is an old approach that many have become unfamiliar with, it would have been ideal to have some sort of stealth tutorial in the game, or at least ease the player into the stealth-based gameplay more evenly. As it is, you'll be faced with frustrating stealth-required situations that stick out like a sore thumb in the overall structure of the game.

An overwhelmingly positive aspect of PDZ is the plethora of weapons available. There are a total of 19 guns at Joanna's disposal, with a handful of other weapons including grenades, flying blades, and various gadgets. Triggering any one of the weapons is thoroughly satisfying and quite visceral. The full complement of quick and aggressive animations combined with appropriate gunshot sounds are found here. To top it all off, each one of the guns has at least a secondary function. For instance, a handful of rifles also have grenade launchers, while others have silencers, vision modes (like night vision), or other oddities such as a cloaking device. Just about every weapon also has a zoom function simply by pulling the left trigger. The more you pull the trigger, the greater the zoom. This proves to be very useful for pinpoint accuracy and taking out enemies from afar. The sniper rifle in particular can zoom for what seems like miles, and there's rarely anything more fun that taking out an enemy with a headshot that far away. The massive variety of weapons and functions enables the player to approach a level in anyway they see fit. Finally, by completing a mission with a new weapon, that weapon becomes permanently available in your weapons cache and can then be used in any revisited level.

Topping off the visceral satisfaction of the weapons are the enemy reactions once a projectile connects. Each enemy's body part reacts differently to being hit. Shoot an arm and it will jerk backwards, causing the character to stop in his tracks and grab his arm in pain. Shoot a leg and the same will happen. If an enemy happens to be wearing armor, each shot will cause a piece of armor to fly off and tumble to the ground. Score a headshot and your enemy will immediately drop to his knees and fall over. Yes, the instant kill headshot returns and happens just frequently enough to reward skillful play without becoming redundant. All the enemies animate generally well which is great since you'll be shooting a whole lot of them.

It's a good thing shooting enemies is so satisfying because their behavior certainly isn't. By no stretch of the imagination are these intelligent foes. Their typical routine is to madly rush you without any concern for self preservation (albeit, once I could have sworn that I saw an enemy throw over a table and then hide behind it, but I can't be sure). Masses of enemies rushing you no doubt makes for intense encounters from time to time, but the result is a tactic you'll repeat over and over again: continually backing up while firing like mad. Or, if you're lucky, you can simply stand sentry over a doorway as they mindlessly poor through, thus making easy targets.

It's not all bad, however, as you'll be required to fend off pure unadulterated aggression with a few handy maneuvers heretofore unseen in a first person shooter. Corners and standalone objects, once approached, will allow a context sensitive cover position. Press the A button and the camera will zoom out to a third-person perspective viewing Joanna with her back against a wall. At any point she can pop out from behind cover to take out enemies while drastically reducing the chances of being hit herself. Another new ability is the dive and roll feature. When things get really crazy, you can press the left shoulder button and press in any direction causing the camera to zoom out slightly into a third-person perspective while Joanna dives and rolls. This doesn't guarantee that you'll take no damage, but works well enough to make it difficult for enemies to score a hit. These additions to gameplay are very welcome and useful, despite the fact that they seem somewhat underdeveloped in the overall context of the game. Much like the stealth tactics, they seem thrown in without much introduction or development. But they are there, and no doubt significant. In fact, going back to playing Halo 2 I was surprised how much I missed the ability to dive and roll out of trouble when needed.

The single player campaign has its appeal, but ends on a low note with a push over of a final boss. As I mentioned earlier, there are multiple difficulty settings that offer up a tremendous amount of challenge. But the challenge is typically in the form of more accurate and powerful enemies as opposed to advanced combat tactics. Once you've played through a few of the levels on the higher difficulty settings, chances are you won't be compelled to go the extra mile for full completion.

The real treat in PDZ is the online multiplayer component. Halo 2 provides the perfect analog: whereas Halo 2's online multiplayer was a tightly Bungie controlled gametype and matching system, PDZ opts instead to give players the ability to host games and customize them as they wish. This has its pros and cons. Halo 2 often felt like a strictly competitive perfectly balanced machine, sometimes to the detriment of pure fun. PDZ is a much looser and customizable experience that sometimes feels quite random. One thing is certain, though, PDZ's online multiplayer is more often than not a very fun experience.

There are quite a few different game types in multiplayer to suit everyone's taste. Going into descriptive detail of each type is pretty pointless; you'll just have to try them out for yourself to come to grips with what they offer. The customization allows you to change many different variables including game type, weapon set, level variations, number of players, number of bots, and so on. The inclusion of bots into multiplayer is a welcome addition, and can round out a game's roster if actual players are hard to come by. It's not unusual to find games of up to 32 players with a mixture of bots and humans both. While the bots aren't exceptionally bright, their skill level can be adjusted for a greater challenge. The levels are even customizable in size, with the larger variations spanning what seems like whole square miles. When set to this size, you end up with a sniper's dream; zooming in all the way across the map from many of the ideal sniper positions and taking out competitors is pretty awesome. There's so much in the multiplayer that it's no wonder that the vast majority of the 50 unlockable achievements in the game are multiplayer achievements.

The performance of the online multiplayer is pretty solid; I've rarely encountered problems regarding lag or connecting to a match. But as a final note on multiplayer, it should be noted that this more open structure to customizing, matching, and playing will often result in widely different experiences for players. For one thing, because there's a single player that hosts a game, you are pretty much at their mercy in regard to how they choose to set up a match. For instance, you may have joined for Team Deathmatch, but could find yourself the next game playing capturing the flag. There will also be players of widely different skill levels. Every now and then you'll be up against a ringer, but more often than not (in my experience anyhow) your opponents aren't going to offer up a whole lot of challenge. Having said all that, you'll have more fun than frustration with online multiplayer.

Visually PDZ impresses, but suffers slightly from what most 360 launch titles seem to suffer from: While there are the occasional awe inspiring moments, PDZ doesn't consistently slap you across the face with that next generation "WOW" factor. Every surface in the game exhibits an impressive amount of texture detail and the much talked about 'sheen' lighting effect. While quite a few reviews have knocked the visuals for its abundance of sheen, I found it simply pretty to look at. Characters are well rounded with many polygons, and the detail on them is pretty incredible as well. Most impressive about the characters is how the game manages to throw a great deal of them at you at any given time while maintaining a generally solid framerate. These are all impressive features of the visuals, but at the same time don't meet the high expectation of many who expected more from next generation visuals. PDZ impresses the most when it presents you with vast stretches of outdoor environments. The good news is that with the combination of the fantastic weapon modeling and animations, occasionally impressive environments, and generally solid looking characters, PDZ is a very impressive looking game, even if didn't completely blow me away.